Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 47 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:47

وَكَانُوا۟ يَقُولُونَ أَئِذَا مِتْنَا وَكُنَّا تُرَابًا وَعِظَـٰمًا أَءِنَّا لَمَبْعُوثُونَ

“And they used to say, "When we die and become dust and bones, are we indeed to be resurrected?”

Saheeh International

Essence

A transcript of mockery, built in three stages to sound impossible, and the verb it mocks means a kneeling animal told to rise.

A reflection

Not reassembled, roused

On a night ferry the crew's last job before coming alongside is waking people. Not carrying them, not rebuilding them. Going along the rows, a hand on a shoulder, saying the name of the port. The passengers arrive on deck having done nothing at all except be roused and set moving.

The word these people were jeering at is that word, and almost nobody hears it.

One lexicon gives the root as rousing. A traveller untied the cord binding his camel's foreleg, or made it rise from kneeling, and sent it off: baʿatha al-baʿīr. Sahih al-Bukhari records a Companion's words from a journey, we roused the camel, and the lost necklace lay beneath it. The lexicons sum the idea up as removing what held a thing back from moving. So you baʿath a sleeper when you wake him. A ruler baʿath an army. Allah baʿath a messenger. And Allah baʿath the dead.

So the Arabic image is not a workshop reassembling fragments. It is a hobbled animal having its cord untied and being told to get up.

That changes the shape of the argument the deniers thought they were winning. They were picturing a construction problem: dust, bones, how would anyone put that back together? The word they were sneering at never claimed to be a construction problem. It claimed to be a matter of permission to move.

And the same verb is used of a prophet being sent and a sleeper being woken. That tells you what kind of category the Quran puts it in. Being raised is not described as a feat. It is described as the end of an obstruction.

The passengers on that ferry did not solve the crossing. They slept through it, and were woken when it was finished.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.